Rotated map puts a twist in the foundation tale

DID a Portuguese seafarer called Christopher de Mendonca lead a
fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 - almost 250 years
before Captain James Cook?

The startling claim is made in a book - published today - by the
retired Canberra-based science journalist Peter Trickett. Trickett
believes Mendonca left irrefutable evidence of his historic voyage:
a detailed and uncannily accurate map of Australia's entire east
coast.

Trickett's quest began eight years ago in a Canberra bookshop
where he bought a beautiful portfolio of rarely seen maps -
exquisite reproductions from the Vallard Atlas, a 16th-century
document so precious and delicate it never leaves its
air-conditioned vault in the Huntington Library in Los Angeles.

The original Vallard Atlas contains 15 hand-drawn maps,
completed no later than 1545 in Dieppe, France, and represents the
entire world as it was then known to Europeans. Scholars had long
asked why part of one of the Vallard maps - featuring 120 place
names in Portuguese, not French - closely resembled the coast of
Queensland. But they had dismissed it as a coincidence, because the
map suddenly jutted out at right angles for 1500 kilometres,
bearing no relation to any known coastline.

However, Trickett came up with an intriguing theory: what if the
atlas compilers in Dieppe had wrongly aligned two Portuguese charts
they were copying from?

He called in a computer expert who was able to cut the map in
two and rotate the bottom half 90 degrees.

"Up to that point it was just a theory," Trickett says.

"But once it was rotated … the entire east coast of
Australia, and part of the south coast as far as Kangaroo Island,
was revealed in incredible detail."

Trickett believes the charts were made by Mendonca, who set off
from the Portuguese base at Malacca with a fleet of four ships on a
secret mission ordered by King Manuel I. If Trickett is right,
Mendonca sailed past Fraser Island, into Botany Bay, around Wilsons
Promontory and as far as Kangaroo Island before returning to
Malacca via the North Island of New Zealand.

But because the Portuguese wanted to prevent other European
powers learning about their discovery, Mendonca's charts were kept
secret. Instead, says Trickett, Mendonca was rewarded by being made
commander of the lucrative fortress at Hormuz in the Persian Gulf,
where he eventually died. "His voyage ranks with that of Columbus
or Magellan," says Trickett.

"But it was secret, unfortunately."

On the southern coast, Trickett says, Mendonca clearly marked
many of the outstanding features: Cap Frimosa (Wilsons Promontory),
Illa Grossa (Kangaroo Island), Rio Real (Spencer Gulf) and Golfo
Grande (the Great Australian Bight). But the most significant
feature on the Vallard map is Baia Neve. Trickett insists this is
what Cook later called Botany Bay, the birthplace of modern
Australia.

Beyond Capricorn: How Portuguese adventurers secretly discovered
and mapped Australia and New Zealand 250 years before Captain Cook
by Peter Trickett, East Street Publications, $35.